In celebration of Valentine's Day & artist Yadviga Dowmont Halsey's 90th birthday, Juan Alonso Studio will be showing a series of her paintings based on "Lovers", February 1-23, 2018.

Yadviga Dowmont Halsey’s compositions are dreamlike studies in human nature. They are impromptu plays where the leading characters vary in emotion from the very tragic to the overjoyed and we, as the audience, provide our own individual interpretation of the drama before us. These paintings are about emotion, human interaction, memory and moments in time. They are psychological narratives layered with tragedy, frivolity and everything else in between.

I am pleased to have work from the Reservoir Series in a two person exhibit with Terrell Lozada at the City of Kent’s Centennial Center Gallery located at 400 W Gowe St, Kent, WA through February 26, 2018.

Please join me at the Microsoft Auditorium of the Seattle Public Library Downtown Branch for a talk and slide presentation about my recent trip(s) to Havana, Cuba.

Tatuaje, La Habana, Cuba, 2017

Join a special artist talk with Seattle-based Cuban artist Juan Alonso-Rodríguez. His journey begins in Havana, leaving his immediate family at age 9 and arriving in Miami in 1966. He came to Seattle via San Francisco in 1982 where he has lived since and creates studio and public works. Juan is an activist, arts advocate, Seattle Arts Commissioner and serves on the city’s Public Art Advisory Committee. He has also won numerous awards including a Mayor’s Arts Award, the DeJunius Hughes Award for Activism and most recently the Conductive Garboil Grant. He has shown extensively throughout the US and is in the collections of Microsoft, General Mills, The Tacoma Art Museum and the Portland Art Museum, among others.

His presentation will include influences in his art from his childhood in Cuba, reuniting with siblings and finding that there is much more to his homeland than old American cars, romanticized versions of a casual tourist and the Buena Vista Social Club. Unlike a travelogue, this is an artist’s personal view of a complex place that has been and remains a major source of inspiration in a career that spans over three decades.

Making our Mark: Art by Pratt Teaching Artists is a commemorative exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Pratt Fine Arts Center. The exhibition features work from over 250 Pratt teaching artists throughout the organization’s influential history. Founded in 1976 to provide high-quality visual arts training in Seattle’s Central District—one of the city’s most economically and ethnically diverse neighborhoods—Pratt has been instrumental in shaping the arts landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

There is no application process for classes at Pratt. As a community based organization, the core of Pratt’s mission is the belief that art should be accessible to all. Offering low-cost and free classes in a variety of mediums including glass, sculpture, jewelry, wood, and printmaking, Pratt gives many students their first exposure to making art. Over a thousand artists have taught at Pratt since its creation, sharing their knowledge of these diverse media with thousands more students. Making our Mark celebrates the lasting legacy of these teachers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Many of the teaching artists represented in the exhibition will be familiar to Bellevue Arts Museum audiences. Notable Northwest artists including Preston Singletary, Tip Toland, Cappy Thompson, and Jana Brevick have all been included in group and solo exhibitions at BAM. Most recently, several artists to be included in Making our Mark were featured in BAM Biennial 2016: Metalmorphosis, including Maria Phillips and Nancy Wordon, respective recipients of the Award of Excellence and People’s Choice Awards.

I am honored to have one of my photographs taken on my last trip to Havana included in this important exhibit at CoCA.

A RETROSPECTIVE FROM 36 YEARS OF EXHIBITS & HAPPENINGSJoin us Thursday, October 5 for the exhibition, CoCA Legacy, and view a mal electio nfluentia rtist ro h thousands ignificant contemporar rtist we have ha h leasur orkin it n ou ich 36-year history in Seattle.

I am honored to be part of a group exhibit of Latino artists at the Washington State Convention Center on the Level 2 Galleria. The show also includes the works of curator Blanca Santander, Alfredo Arreguin, Fulgencio Lazo, Cecilia Alvarez, Rene Julio, Gabriel Marquez and Tatiana Garmendia.

I am happy to be included in an exhibition titled Many Lands, curated by Ben Gannon atBridge Productions. The exhibit runs from January 11 through February 4 with a reception on January 14 from 6 - 9 pm.. This show is an attempt to situate abstract and abstracted landscape artworks together in the context of “world-building”. Historically, this idea takes place in science fiction and fantasy writing as mythopoetic works, but also potentially inhabitable material spaces. This connecting thread fosters connections between genres and styles in contemporary mark making, and between the speculative media of contemporary art and genre fiction. Bridge Productions is located on the 2nd floor of Hamilton Work Studios at 6007 12th Ave S., Seattle, WA 98108

I'm very happy to be included in this show of paintings of artists from the Seattle area. It is organized by Matthew Offenbacher and presented by Seattle University's Hedreen Gallery. Runs through December 17 with a reception on December 8, 5-8 pm. V2 is located at 1525 11th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122 (the old Value Village space on Capitol Hill). See you there! American Painting Today

After wanting to have a website I can keep up and update myself, I've finally gone and done it. It has been a trying couple of days but it's up and running. Please take a look and let me know what you think but don't be too harsh. I'm much better at making art than I am at making websites. Thank you!